revolution2
by minmb82
Summary: revolution2


**Chapter 2**

_Kaista, 8 Kedaa, 4405, Faey Orthodox Calendar_

_ Monday, 21 April 2019 Terran Standard Calendar_

_ Kaista, 8 Kedaa, year 1330 of the 97__th__ Generation, Karinne Historical Reference Calendar_

_Foxwood East, Karsa, Karis_

This was…incredible.

Standing at the top of a very small, gentle hill in the center of a meadow, Jason looked down at Serenity Woods, a wood of ancient hardwoods with little to no underbrush on the forest floor, the trees spaced far enough apart to have some visibility in the immediate area. In the distance were the Regarak Mountains, and in the other direction, at the edge of the wood, was the large city of Freeport with the Albian Sea beyond. Hanging in the sky over the city of Freeport was a distant planet, a planet of reds, browns, tans, and blacks known as Netherim, making it abundantly clear that he wasn't standing in some meadow on Karis. Jason was dressed in a simple vest and leggings of black leather, and the hilt of a sword jutted over his left shoulder…the base of the scabbard pressing almost uncomfortably on the top of his tail.

This wasn't a location anywhere in the real world. This was a virtual world, the world of Arca, and the setting for a new game being developed by the shell company attached to 3D. The company had two development studios under its umbrella, Fifth Dimension Studios, which was responsible for Vanguard, and Thunderbird Studios, which was responsible for this project. The Jason that stood on that hill wasn't Jason, it was his in game avatar who was a feline race called a Jagaara. And Jagaara had tails.

This was a new game, a fantasy-based RPG MMO named _Citadel Online_, and a rather ambitious one. For one, it was merge _only_. Only jacked players could play the game. For another, the game itself was literally the size of _two_ _planets_…or it would ultimately be. In the current version, only one continent on each of the two planets of Arca and Netherim were developed, but the other continents would be developed in future expansions, as well as the Citadel for which the game was named, a small moon-like celestial body that hung in space between the two planets. The project had pulled in hundreds of game developers from Terra with experience in MMO games, hiring developers from past MMORPG games like _Everquest_, _Neverwinter Nights_, _World of Warcraft_, _Aion_, and _Dark Age of Camelot_, hiring nearly 300 developers with RPG experience to help develop the lore, gameplay, and quest system of the game, while the "art department" and programmers were actually Cyvanne and several members of 3D that were working on the project as research on the capabilities and limits of jacked simsense VR. Cyvanne was the primary programmer of the game, and the fact she was a CBIM made her scary effective at it. What would have taken a programming team months, or maybe even years to do, Cyvanne did in nine days. She wrote the entire code of the game in nine days. All she needed were the parameters and the mechanics of the game engine, which was what the devs helped design with her.

This was the initial closed alpha version of the game, where the maps, scenery, and game engine's operations were more or less finished, but most of the gameplay content and quests had yet to be added in. The city of Freeport was all buildings and no NPCs right now, and this version of the game was basically a test world so they could make sure that the maps had no bugs or glitches in them. Right now, the only moving entities within the game were the alpha test players and background animals and insects, which had very simple AIs which they were testing to make sure they worked before they started adding in the more complex AI NPCs.

Cyvanne had created the look and feel of this world, and Jason was _impressed_. She was by far the most artistic of the CBIMs, and she had done an incredible job making this world feel like it wasn't reality, but was _close enough_ to feel comfortable here. It was reality with a touch of the fantastic, where the colors were a little brighter, the air had a feeling of _magic_ in it, and what didn't exist in reality seemed entirely normal and natural here. She had designed every tree in the forest, every leaf on every tree, every contour of the hills, every blade of grass, and designed the animals and insects and races and monsters that inhabited it. She had pulled inspiration from real places in the Confederation for many of the locations in the game. Serenity Woods were inspired by the ancient hardwood forests of western Europe on Terra, for example. The entire planet of Netherim was inspired by the planet Araban, and anyone who had seen pictures of Araban would see that similarity…and boy would the Arabok go nuts over seeing their planet represented like that.

This wasn't the first completely artificial VR environment he'd seen, since some of Yila's simsense viddies were computer generated fantasy worlds…but those simsense viddies were _nothing_ like this. Simsense viddies gave the illusion of being there, but it was never so completely realistic that you didn't know you were in a simsense. This…this blurred that line. Jason had a hard time telling if he was in a real world or not—albeit a world very different from the real world because Cyvanne had created this world to be a more…_vibrant_ version of reality—from the fact that he felt entirely _natural_ having fur and a tail and whiskers to the way the sun warmed his face and the wind pulled gently at his whiskers. This was military-grade merge compatibility, the kind of merge he'd expect to have in a Titan or in a combat simulator, and Cyvanne had found a way to port the merge sensation of biogenics onto a moleculartronic platform. Yila was going to market Cyvanne's advances as "Third Gen Simsense," and of course make everyone upgrade their simsense decoder rigs to take advantage of it.

To be fair, Vanguard had nearly this level of detail on its maps, but the difference there was, that game moved so fast that players didn't get a chance to appreciate it. But standing on that hill, with nobody shooting at him and able to look around and see everything in peace, it made him truly marvel at Cyvanne's virtual reality masterpiece.

The game was ambitious in more than its VR simsense setting. Gameplay wise, the players in the game would be divided into ten factions, each faction holding four races, with a total of a whopping 40 available player character races. For now, five factions were on Arca, and five were on Netherim, splitting the players evenly between the two planets. While players from different factions could group together and play together, players from other factions risked being attacked if they entered another faction's home territory, could be killed without penalty by other players or NPCs for invading another faction's home territory. Serenity Woods and Freeport were human territory, part of the Golden Lion Faction of humans, high elves, mountain dwarves, and the Jagaara, with Serenity Woods yielding to the Heartwood and the elven city of Astralar to the south, the Claw Foothills and the mountain dwarf city of Deepforge to the north, and the Dark Thicket and the Jagaara city of Twinfang to the east. It was that physical proximity that made the four races part of the same faction, and it allowed the gameplay developers to create content that low-level players of all four races could enjoy without having to go very far from home and stay within their faction borders. Each faction would have a balance like that, with a "physical" race, a "magical" race, and a "balanced" race, with each faction having a slightly different mix for the fourth race. In the Golden Lion faction, the Jagaara were the physical race, with enhanced physical stats that would make them excel in combat and crafting professions that relied on strength, like blacksmithing, and a bonus to combat skills. The high elves were the "magical" race, with bonuses to their mental and magical attributes and enhanced skills in magical arts, and the humans and dwarves were the "balanced" races, with a good mix of both traits, humans leaning a bit towards magic and the dwarves leaning a bit towards the physical. That didn't mean that a high elf couldn't be a badass fighter or a Jagaara couldn't be a kickass magician, it just meant that those races had natural attributes that gave them advantages in certain skills and professions, and those advantages had the most impact when the player first started. A just-started Jagaara was going to beat a just-started high elf in a straight up physical fight, but the high elf would kick the Jagaara's ass if it was a magical duel.

The genius of the game was that it wasn't class and level based. There were no classes in Citadel Online and no levels, everything was based on skills. The abilities most often associated with classes were divided into skills which players could learn, allowing a player to customize her character with exactly the skills she wanted to play the game exactly the way she wanted to play. Every skill was theoretically available to every player, with the exception of some small number of skills being exclusively available to only certain races. A player could load up on physical and fighting skills to become a nasty front line warrior, but also have several magical skills that complemented those combat skills to give the player some versatility, for example. And since there were 1,254 skills in the game, it gave players a nearly overwhelming array of skills to pursue. Not all of them were combat based, however. Some were utility skills, like Appraise Item, Detect Secret Doors, and so on, some were crafting skills so players could make their own items and equipment, and some were purely "fun" skills that had no impact on gameplay, like musical instruments, fishing, painting, or cooking. Some skills, all players had at the start, like the basic combat skills and the language skills of the four races on their faction. Some skills players had because they were racial, such as a high elf, who started the game with a Spellcasting skill in a school of magic of the player's choice and given three spells that the player would choose at character creation. Some skills weren't offered for training in a certain faction area, requiring a player to seek out a trainer either in another faction's territory or in neutral territory to learn it. And there were some skills that could only be learned by finding an item that granted it to the player, known as Ancient Skills. One of the major pursuits of the game for players was to find and learn Ancient Skills, because they were more powerful than normal skills, and many of them granted players strong combat abilities. The last way to gain skills was for the player to invent the skill herself, but that was an endgame aspect of the skill system. When a player achieved a high enough skill level in a skill, she could invent her own unique skills based on the parent skill, like special attacks using a weapon skill or a unique spell in a school of magic where the player had a very high Spellcasting skill. Skills were increased in two ways, by spending Experience Points to raise them and by using them, which caused skills to increase during the course of gameplay. It both caused skills to passively increase with use to give a sense of growth and allowed the player to invest XP into skills to raise them more quickly, representing their dedication to improving that skill.

The gameplay was revolutionary, because the player didn't hit a button on a hotbar to execute a skill, they _performed it themselves_. Players with Spellcasting skills had to actually perform the spells, speak the words of power and use whatever material foci the spell required, like a wand or a fetish. Players with the Sword skill didn't just hit a button and watch their avatar attack, they swung the sword themselves…though the game's engine did assist them by "guiding" their movements based on their skill level. Part of the game's unique enjoyment was having to learn the actual movements to, for example, perform a Combo Attack with a Sword skill, and if they didn't do the moves right, the attack failed. And those with some real-world skill that related to the in-game skill would receive a bonus to that skill reflecting their real experience. So, Jason would receive a bonus to his Martial Arts skill based on his real-world knowledge of Aikido. He could, in effect, use his real-world skill in Aikido in the game, as well as play a piano in-game because he could play a piano in real life…though playing with his avatar's clawed hands might be a bit problematic.

It would also introduce some civilians to the concept of controlling avatar bodies that had parts that they didn't. Jagaara had tails, and the non-tailed players that rolled them could learn how to control those tails, to learn how to use a limb they didn't have in real life. That was an aspect of jacks that most jacked people didn't encounter, but something that a rigger would understand intimately. Riggers "controlled" their machine bodies in ways that had nothing to do with a flesh and blood body, to the point where many riggers had psychosomatic issues after breaking a long merge because they were so used to having an exomech for a body. Jason already knew how to control a tail by driving bionoids of races with tails, so he had no problems with his tail. What he had to learn to control were the retracted claws in his fingers.

As a Jagaara, Jason started with skills the other races in his faction didn't have, but races in other factions might. He started with the skill Claw and Fang, giving him the ability to fight with his claws and by biting enemies, inflicting damage without weapons. He also gained the Stalk skill, a combo move silently/concealment skill which helped in combat situations by allowing him to gain a surprise bonus on enemies if he could ambush someone. For non-combat, he started with the Hunting skill, the Climbing skill, and the Tracking skill. He received a bonus to his Strength, Agility, and Speed stats reflecting the physical power and grace of the Jagaara, and he also had bonus abilities not available to any other race in his faction, the abilities of Enhanced Hearing, Enhanced Smell, and Night Vision. Enhanced Hearing gave him a bonus to the Listening skill if a player had it (and he did), but it also allowed him to hear sounds from a longer range than other players when outside. It added twenty meters to his range to hear sounds in outdoor settings, allowing him to hear something coming from further away than races that didn't have Enhanced Hearing, but did nothing in an indoor setting unless he also had the Listening skill. If he did, then it increased the range of his Listening skill by five meters in an indoor setting. Enhanced Smell gave him a bonus to his Tracking skill (which he had by default as a racial skill) and allowed him to identify objects by scent, but it was also very useful because it allowed him to smell poison in drinks and food. Night Vision was self-explanatory, giving him the ability to see in the outdoors at night. It didn't let him see in lightless environments like deep in a cave, however, nor let him see if he was afflicted with a Blind spell.

Each race had bonus skills, modifiers to their stats, and bonus abilities, which really diversified the races and balanced the factions by giving races in each faction access to bonus skills and abilities that evened them out when comparing them to the others. It made the Jagaara feel much different from the high elves, dwarves, and humans in his faction, but he was somewhat similar to the Drakkin, a race of reptilian bipeds in the Black Fangs faction on Netherim. They too had the Claw and Fang skill and the Hunting skill, and had a similar spread of bonuses to their physical abilities, because they too were a physically powerful and agile race. That made them similar to a Jagaara from a gameplay perspective, but the two races had enough of their own unique aspects to make them different from one another. There were small races like the Gnomes, who were the size of a Prakarikai, and big races like the Ogres, who were the height of a Bari-Bari but much more heavily built. There were fast, powerful races like the Jagaara, and highly intelligent and magical races like the high elves and the Azari, a Netherim race. There were four races that had truly unique abilities that Jason felt might be a tiny bit game-breaking, but they hadn't been changed. The Drakkin and the Sylphs had wings and could fly—Sylphs were based on the Imbiri—the Nazatar could breathe water, and the Pikk could walk on walls like an insect. Thus far, those were still in the game, which made him think that there would be _tons_ of Drakkin and Sylphs in the game when it first launched.

He turned his head when a high elf female walked up to him, wearing a lacy, breezy dress of white gossamer silk, an elf with Cyvanne's face. "So, what do you think?" she asked, making a grand gesture at Serenity Woods. She was speaking Elvish, which he could understand because he had basic skill in the languages of his three ally races. And she was speaking _real_ Elvish; Cyvanne had created 40 new player character languages for the game (Sun Elves, Wood Elves, and Dark Elves also spoke Elvish, and Mountain, Hill, and Underdark Dwarves also spoke Dwarven, but they belonged to different factions), and those languages were complete in both spoken and written forms. She'd also created six other languages based on the Ancient Races, most prevalent in old ruins scattered across the continent, but those were language skills that players had to pick up during their gameplay. Since the game was merge-only, part of the game's operation was to have the player access the language skills possessed by player that was stored in the vidlink that ran the game code so they could understand the in-game languages, creating maximum immersion. So long as Jason was in the game, he could speak fluent Jagaaran and broken Elvish, Dwarven, and Common, but as soon as he logged out, he forgot them because they weren't in his organic memory. He could learn those languages naturally, little by little and piece by piece as he played, but the game wouldn't download the game's languages into the brain of a player.

"I think you did an incredible job, girl," he said approvingly in Jagaaran, his speech a little lispy because of the fangs. "Are all the zones as detailed as this one?"

"Yup," she replied, turning to look towards Freeport, switching to Jagaaran herself. Since she had admin privileges, she could give herself any skill in the game…and she more or less needed to. Starting Jagaaran players started with a low skill rating in Elvish, so he wouldn't be able to understand everything she said if she spoke Elvish. Races started with skill in their faction partner races' languages, but only just high enough to understand basic things. He could understand things like _go there_ and _what is your name_ in Elvish, but if she started reciting Hamlet in Elvish, he wouldn't understand much of it at all, just a word here and there. "The game devs gave me a general idea of what each zone needed from a gameplay perspective, how they could divide up questing areas so lower skill players didn't wander into places where they'd get killed, and I used that to generate the terrain. Then I went back and filled in the little details, like caves and whatnot, to give the game devs more options for setting up the quests and add flavor to the zones. I liked working on that much better than this," she said, pointing at the distant Netherim hanging in the sky behind Freeport. "I had a lot of fun designing the maps on Netherim, since it's so exotic compared to most terrestrial planets. How many planets have a boiling ocean or burning mountains?" she grinned. "The maps are finalized, but the game devs are still working on some of the skill systems. Given there's over a thousand skills, it's taking them a while to balance everything."

"Yeah. I spent over an hour in Twinfang at a target dummy trying to figure out how the Claw and Fang skill works," he admitted with a chuckle, holding up his clawed hand. He extended the claws—something he had to learn how to do—and showed them to her. "I eventually got it. I even raised it six points practicing," he laughed. "I hope the tutorials cover racial skills."

"Yeah, they will," she nodded. "We haven't put them into the game yet. How's the simsense?"

"A little weird, since this race has fur," he said, running his clawed hand up his forearm and feeling the fur ruffle and shift under the pads on his hand. "But it's pretty damn solid. I can smell you from here thanks to the Jagaara's enhanced smell ability, feel the warmth of the sun, and so on."

"We're using the third gen moleculartronic simsense software for the base release," she told him. "But we'll be releasing a Karinne-only version based on biogenic simsense for House members. Right now you're using the commercial release, so the simsense should only be better when you're using simsense designed for biogenic systems."

"Hell, I can barely tell this isn't real as it is, I'm afraid of what _even better_ will be like. We'll for sure need limiters on the biogenic simsense side of things, or players may get sensory overload."

"I know," she nodded. "You tried out any other races?"

"Not yet, I kinda got hung up trying to figure out Claw and Fang," he chuckled. "How are the flying races being handled?"

"Same as the others. Flying won't be a gimme. The players will have to learn how to do it, the same way you did when you practiced in that Imbiri bionoid," she answered. "There will be a flying skill, but it won't actively assist players until they reach a score of one hundred, and they can only skill it up by using it. And for game balancing purposes, they can't fly forever. We're kicking around putting a one minute time limit on flight before they get tired and have to land, at least at first. That time will increase as they gain more skill in flying, one of the ways raising your flying skill will matter, up to a hard cap of seven to ten minutes, at least in overworld applications. We'll have preset flight paths that flying characters can use to travel from zone to zone without tiring out. And there will be hard barriers in place keeping the overly clever from getting over things they're not supposed to be able to cross," she added.

That hade him laugh again. "Yeah, you'd better be ready for that. Nothing's more cunning than an MMO player trying to get past a wall he can't climb," he told her. "What about the Nazatar and the Pikk?"

"We're leaving them alone for now and we'll see if they break the game in the open beta," she answered. "You gotten much further than this?"

He shook his head. "Like I said, I kinda got hung up in Twinfang, and just managed to get through the Jagaara starting zone, um, the Dark Thicket, and get here. I was going to go to Freeport and see how different it was from Twinfang."

"Very. Every race's cities and villages have unique architecture," she told him. "Jagaara architecture is more primitive, tribal, with logs and leather and thatch and ropes, where human architecture is based on European medieval masonry styles, and the dwarven architectures is all massive stone, blocky and heavy and imposing. High elf architecture is definitely the most unique. It's stone and wood, but those materials were shaped by magic, not by artisans, so their buildings grow and flow, are very organic. It's definitely worth a look."

"I'll dick around in here again after the council meeting," he told her. "So far it's been pretty interesting. I'm curious to check out Netherim."

"Just remember to reroll. There's a bit of a bug right now trying to take a race into another faction's territory," she warned. "It's proving to be a bit of a bitch to track down and squash."

"That's why this is an alpha test," Jason chuckled.

"I hate having to program in TEL code."

"Tell me about it," he agreed. "When are you guys putting in the NPCs?"

"Any minute now. We have to run a couple of tests before we can spawn them."

"Cool. I just hope you didn't go overboard with the AI systems for them."

"I doubt one's going to become self-aware," she chuckled. "But some of them are pretty damn complex, especially for the lore characters and heroes. But, if we did it right, even the innkeeper AIs should be able to hold something of a conversation with players. The devs will put in the trigger words to trigger both public and hidden NPC quests with the next pass," she supplied. "The plan is to spawn the NPCs without quests enabled to test their stability and AI behavior, and when they pass that test, we'll start adding the quest interactions."

"I hope they're adding the monsters in with the NPCs."

"Not yet," she answered. "We want to make sure the NPC AI is working before we start messing with hostile monster AI. Oh wait, they're spawning in the NPCs right now," she announced.

The effect was noticed. The entire world seemed to _stutter_, a lag spike in the datastream when a fuckton of NPCs were spawned simultaneously, and seconds later two young human girls entered the meadow, both of them carrying baskets and heading for some berry bushes further down the edge of the meadow. Both of them were naked. "Cyvanne," he noted, and she laughed brightly.

"That is _definitely_ a bug," she told him. "Hold on, let me see if I can track that down." Seconds went by, then peasant dresses shimmered into being around the two NPC girls. "Glitch in the human NPC attire database, it's fixed."

"I'm almost afraid to ask why they were made anatomically correct," he said, giving her a sharp look.

"Because it's not real unless what you can't see is just as real as what you can," she grinned in reply.

"You realize that there will be a long list of pre-teen Terran players trying to flip the skirts of the NPCs?"

"For one, there won't be any pre-teens in this game, and for another, the human NPCs will react to it as a hostile act," she winked. "Getting slapped may be the least that will happen to someone trying that. I decided to go for social realism in the human NPCs, so most of them are complete prudes. But not every race will react the same way to something like that. If you go walk around Twinfang again, you'll find the males and females there don't wear much more than loincloths. The Nazatar NPCs don't wear anything, because clothes are a hindrance for an aquatic race."

"And there goes the 'Everyone' rating on Terra," he sighed, which made her laugh.

"This isn't a game for morally twisted Terrans, this is a game for more mature and socially enlightened people," she teased. "And for your information, there's a weenie filter for less progressive races planned for the final release that will clothe the nude NPCs and disable some of the more adult quests and behavioral subroutines in the NPC AI when they interact with them," she told him. "I just hope you're not one of the weenies that goes that direction, or years of living with Jyslin will have been for nothing."

"I'm almost afraid to ask…but I guess I'd better. Just how far will the NPC AIs go?" She grinned at him. "Fuuuuck," he growled, which made her laugh. "This isn't a Faey simsense, woman."

"This is a merge-only game, which means that only adults will be playing it," she retorted. "So while there's some childish comedy in it, the storylines are more mature and there's more adult pursuits included in the game for entertainment purposes. And even NPCs like to have a good time," she lilted, then laughed when he slapped the backs of her knees with his tail.

"Why do I put up with the lot of ya?" he lamented.

"Because you love us," she replied impishly. "Now come on, you should have enough time to look around Freeport before the council meeting. I'll show you some of my favorite parts of the city."

He was doubly impressed when they entered Freeport. As she intimated, Twinfang really wasn't that much to look at, since it was a collection of wood and leather thatched huts surrounding larger crude stone buildings inside a wall made of piled stones and charred logs. Freeport was a surprisingly large city roughly based on western European architecture, and the NPCs were dressed in Terran historical clothing from the middle ages. Smocks, frocks, peasant dresses, stockings, tunics, with armor on guards varying to leather similar to what Jason's avatar wore to full plate armor. No NPC guard carried a firearm, those weren't in the game, but several carried bows or crossbows. There were, however, cannons on the defensive placements around the harbor. The game had cannons as siege weaponry and as armament on ships, but had no firearms. There were _thousands_ of NPCs in the city, Jason noticed as they walked the streets. This was a living, breathing city, and each and every NPC had a program that told it what to do based on parameters programmed into it when it was created. Every NPC had a home, or at least a place where they slept, and had activity cycles based on their home, their job and their hobbies. There were homeless bums in the city, working class laborers, merchants, craftsmen, rich people, and nobles in the city, and they interacted with each other based on the complex AI systems that Cyvanne had created for them.

What made it curiously fun for him was that because he had a low skill in Common, he couldn't understand everything the NPCs around him were saying. His skill in the language would increase with use, him either listening or speaking, and he could see it slowly ticking up as he walked around town with Cyvanne and enjoyed her tour. And the higher the skill got, the more words he could understand. The way Cyvanne had it coded, he'd gain full skill in Common with about 40 minutes of continuous passive exposure to it, like walking around Freeport listening to the NPCs talk to each other, 20 minutes of continuously trying to speak Common to NPCs, like him trying to haggle with a merchant over the cost of an item, or about ten minutes of dedicated "language practice" with a fully skilled Common speaker, either player or NPC—it _was_ a game after all, they weren't going to time gate basic things like players being able to communicate. But, only members of a faction could do that within an allied race's cities and villages. However, in every "starting zone" outside a race's capitol city, there was an NPC language teacher in an out of the way place that outside faction players could reach without much risk of being attacked, that would teach players from outside the faction that race's language…for the rather steep price of 500 gold links, the game's currency. So, a player could master all 40 player character languages and dialects in the game, if he was willing to travel around and pay gold to learn the languages of the other races. That, or he could track down other players who had those language skills and learn from them.

And those were just the _player_ races. There were six Ancient Languages, and there were also languages for some organized monster races, like the lizard men that lived in the Dark Thicket and were the primary antagonists against which starting Jagaara fought during their introductory quests. Players could learn those languages as well, but those were considered Ancient Skills. If he remembered right, Cyvanne said something about a rare drop from a boss in the Jagaara questline, that was the Ancient Skill teaching the lizard man language. And those languages would be useful, because knowing a monster NPC race's language would unlock additional quests for the player and give them the ability to negotiate with NPCs of that race, even raise the reputation with them so the monster NPC race no longer considered them to be enemies…within reason. As a Jagaara, Jason would never be able to raise his standing with the lizard men, because Jagaara and lizard men were mortal enemies, fighting one another for territory in the Dark Thicket. Since he was allied to the humans, dwarves, and elves, the races that were their mortal enemies, the orcs, hobgoblins, and ratmen, also wouldn't ever allow him to become their friend. But in the next faction over, the one holding the Savasa, Hobbits, Joradim, and Vissanu, the mortal enemy races of that faction would allow him to raise his standing with them. It would open up new questlines, like working with those races to undermine the strength of the other faction, even as he did other quests in their faction territory that might raise his standing with the NPCs of that faction. A clever player could raise their standing with both sides and gain the benefits of both sides, like being able to enter their villages and towns and buy from their merchants, effectively becoming a double agent and playing both sides against each other.

Seriously, Cyvanne had majorly done her homework when she coded the game.

By the time they finished touring Freeport, Jason had made two conclusions. One, that this game was going to be a smash hit, probably even bigger than Vanguard. Cyvanne had outdone herself creating something that was beautiful, engaging, complex enough to take some work but not so complex that people would get frustrated, and the simsense aspect of the game made it incredibly immersive. The skill system would allow players to create _exactly_ what they wanted, the combat system would be almost addictively fun, and the sheer size of the world would always give players new places to explore, always have something to do. Two, that a game like this might incite even more people to get jacked, since one had to be capable of merging to play the game. Right now, only about 14% of the Confederation's civilian population was jacked, but games like this, and Yila's next generation of simsense, were going to make people get them just so they could find out what everyone that had jacks was raving about.

This was a game that Jason was going to play, and he was a man that was usually far too busy with work to play games. If someone like him was getting hyped over a game after just a two hour tour in an alpha test, he could only imagine how gamers were going to react to it. There was already a pretty large community of jacked gamers across the Confederation, and when the teaser trailer for Citadel Online hit Civnet tomorrow…look out. The game would be announced tomorrow, with a slated release date sometime late in the year.

They walked out of the front gates of Freeport, and he was having a hard time telling if it was him doing it, or just an avatar doing it. That was how immersive the simsense was.

"So, what's the verdict?" Cyvanne asked.

"I think you found your calling, girl," he told her. "I think Citadel Online is going to be bigger than Vanguard."

"I did have fun designing the game and the world," she smiled. "So, you gonna buy a copy?" She laughed at the flat look he gave her. "Okay, okay, I'll flag your account as permanent and make sure your merge pod's onboard always has the most recent build of the game on it. But all your skills get reset after the beta," she warned. "And no admin privileges. You're just another player, Jayce."

"Cheating isn't all that fun," he snorted. "And that's exactly how I play Vanguard. But I do have one suggestion."

"What's that?"

"An overall common language that all races know," he told her. "I can foresee a bit of a roadblock at the start of the game when people start leaving faction territory and enter neutral territory."

"We've got a workaround for that," she said. "The quests you do in the starter zones as you work your way towards neutral territory introduce players to the other languages on their planet. If we did it right, by the time you enter neutral territory, you have a minimum skill of twenty in the other languages on Arca, and that's the starting skill players have in the other two languages on their faction. That should be just enough for different factions to group together to take on content in the neutral zones. But we want the two planets to have communication issues on purpose, Jayce. The overall concept of the game is faction based, but it's also meant to have a wide chasm between the factions on Arca and the factions on Netherim. The races on the two planets are meant to be very mistrustful of each other.".

"That makes sense," he nodded.

_[Jason, it's almost time,]_ Cybi warned.

"And there's work," he sighed, which made Cyvanne chuckle.

"You could try to split enough to attend council and stay here," she grinned.

"Nah, we'll be discussing the newest treaty offer from the Consortium, so I'd better do more than pretend that I'm paying attention," he replied, which made her laugh. "But I'm definitely gonna come back and look around some more. How long is the alpha gonna be up?"

"As long as possible," she replied. "Part of this is testing its long-term stability."

"Do me a favor and port me to an inn so I can log out," he said.

"Jayce, there's one right _there_," she chided, pointing back inside the gates.

"Oh. Oh, in that case, nevermind," he said, which made her grin at him.

After going into the inn and logging out, he opened his eyes and yawned a bit, feeling a bit of a psychosomatic tingling where his tail should have been. He was sitting at his desk with his feet up on it, leaning back in his chair, and Chichi was curled up on his lap, dozing. The game's software was installed in the merge pod in the other room of his office, but he didn't have to be in it to access it and merge to it. It was just a comfortable place to sit for him, and reclining in the chair at his desk was nearly as comfortable for short periods.

_Short_ being the defining word. His neck had a bit of a crick in it from him being merged to the game for a little over two hours, given he hadn't been splitting and thus had been all but dead to the world. "I'm awake, girl, gonna put my legs down," he warned the tabi, who just moved with him as he did so. He did split then, dividing his attention enough to merge to his Hall of Peace bionoid, practicing his ability to fully control both sides of a split by petting Chichi as his bionoid rose up into the council chamber…and as usual, he was one of the last members to join.

This was a fairly important session, because they were going to debate the treaty terms Mesaiima negotiated with the Consortium. The treaty was straightforward; in return for assisting them in evacuating Andromeda, the Consortium would _never_ return to this galactic cluster. Not that they could anyway, given it would take them thousands of years to get back, but it was the principle of the matter. But the parts of it they had to discuss were the assistance terms. The Consortium was asking for help to evacuate their civilians, to get as many people out of Andromeda and away from the Syndicate as possible, and given that quite a few empires in the Confederation did not trust the Consortium _at all_, there was quite a bit to talk about. Empires like the Urumi, the Skaa, the Alliance, the Karinnes, the Imperium, those who had fought the Consortium before the Confederation was formed and immediately afterward, those who had suffered _billions _of casualties at their hands, they wouldn't trust the Consortium to keep their word, to send transports and lightly armed ships to help civilians evacuate. There was also the matter of the protection of the Stargate that would link the evacuation point to their new territory, which looked more and more like it was going to be Galaxy A5A-1. Rudy was going to give his final report to the council during this session, telling them that the KES had confirmed that the galaxy was suitable for the Consortium to use as their new home.

There was also the matter of the colonization fleet en route to the home galaxy. It was way out in flat space right now, and it would have to be brought out of hyperspace and returned to Andromeda so it could be sent to the new galaxy…and that would more or less require the Karinnes. And that was another rather sticky problem. Only a translight drive could get a ship into position to intercept the incoming fleet, so a Karinne ship would have to make the initial contact with the fleet. Jason wouldn't trust the Consortium any further than he could throw a planet, but he would more or less have to have some of their ruling energy beings on a ship to issue orders to the fleet when it was knocked out of hyperspace. There would need to be a Stargate there to get them back to Andromeda, which would mean a sizable Karinne fleet there to protect it, and there was no telling what might happen when the Karinnes and the Consortium were squared off like that. There was a hell of a lot of bad blood towards the Consortium on Karis, given they'd attacked the planet twice and Karinnes had died fighting them off, and Jason was right there with his people. He'd lost several good friends in those battles, like Drae, and there was no forgiveness in his heart towards the Consortium over what they'd done to his house and to the Exiles. But he might have to swallow all that and work with them, something he was only willing to do because he'd never have to see them again when it was done.

Zaa's hologram appeared—she was still the only unjacked member of the council and they still hadn't designed a proper Kimdori-only bionoid for her—and the current chair of the council gaveled it to order, none other than Imperator Enva. She stood at the lectern with two Sha'i-ree aides sitting at the desks in front of and to the sides of her podium, who were also bionoids. The permanent aides to the Speaker sat to each side of them, who were Terrans who were not Karinnes. There were four permanent aides to the Speaker that worked for the council, and they worked with the Speaker's staff when it was their turn to hold the gavel, a system that worked despite how chaotic it sounded. Enva's staff was working with the Speaker's staff so she was well informed during her ten day tenure holding the gavel.

It struck him. The Dreamers called her _the Hammer_…and she was holding the gavel, which was effectively a wooden hammer. Was that what the title meant?

The session started, and Jason remained quiet and just listened as Mesaiima gave her report, Rudy gave his report, Maraa gave a report on the sincerity of the Consortium when it came to obeying the treaty, then the council entered into rather free-wheeling debate. Debate wasn't structured despite having so many members, with rulers being considerate enough to allow others to talk, and he rarely spoke during debate…he rarely spoke during council most of the time. He listened as the council more or less broke into two sides, those who had fought the Consortium and those who joined afterward, with those who had fought much more suspicious and reluctant to accept the terms of the treaty as they were. They wanted much more detailed language in the treaty spelling out how the Consortium would behave, and wanted ironclad agreements that all Consortium military vessels would be sent to the new galaxy _before_ the Confederation moved in to assist the civilians. Dahnai and Assaba and Vizzie and Grayhawk and Ethikk and Sk'Vrae had all been burned by the Consortium before, and they wanted extravagant guarantees to make sure it didn't happen again. Sk'Vrae and Assaba understandably more or less represented the part of council that was wary of the treaty, each for their own very valid reasons.

Debate lasted for nearly four hours, then it was tabled for the day so all of them could consider the points that were made and vote on the treaty tomorrow, and they moved on to the other business on the schedule. Lorna appeared via hologram and gave her report, putting up images of Atrovet. The interdictor was taken down yesterday, and the Syndicate Navy had reached the moon and had begun assessing the reality of the situation. All the Benga prisoners were there, including Gen, and all the Dreamers were gone, exactly as the Confederation had promised when Jason confronted the Board. The Navy had yet to start dealing with all the sailors and soldiers on the moon, still in the process of contacting the various camps and debriefing the officers to find out what happened, but they did know that Gen and the other 19 Benga that had participated in the cultural program were aboard the fleet flagship and were being debriefed by the Fleet Commander personally. They knew that because Gen himself had told them a few hours ago. That meant that Gen was telling them everything, may be doing it at that very moment, and no doubt they'd have one hell of a report to present to the new Board once it reformed.

It made him worry a bit about Gen. He was very concerned that they might execute him for cooperating with the enemy, but Gen himself seemed unconcerned about it. He'd said that they'd see his cooperation as a cunning move to gather more intelligence about the enemy, which was more or less the Benga way. The fact that he wasn't going to hide anything, tell them everything, would reinforce that idea, he said.

Finally, the council ended after Lorna's report, because there wasn't much they could do about that. Until the Syndicate Board reformed, all they could do was watch and wait and have Kraal keep them up to date on what was going on. The vote on the Consortium treaty offer would be tomorrow…but Jason might try to stall that by asking Maraa to dig a little more. Maraa was proving herself to be one of Denmother's best, and her intel had been critical over the last few takirs.

He broke the merge with an empty belly and an empty office. Chichi must have gotten bored and went back outside, which left him in a dark office that seemed…lonely. Or maybe he was just feeling apprehensive over the peace treaty. He had the feeling that it was going to pass, and that was going to put him in the position where he'd have to interact with those who had killed people he knew, people he cared about. True, Sk'Vrae had more or less done the same thing, but she had apologized and then proved herself by committing to the Articles that became the Confederation.

Which was a bit of a situation for him, given that his plan all along was to do exactly what he was doing. He just hadn't really thought about the fact that his girls would have to be in the same room with the Consortium. He'd made the plan without thinking about the details, that they'd just magically go away once the deal was made, and now he had to consider the fact that Palla would have to stand side by side with one of the energy beings as he told the colonizing fleet what was going on.

He was going to owe her _big time_ after this. Drae had been one of Palla's friends, and he was going to order her to be nice to a being that might have given the orders that got her killed.

After a quick meal down in the cafeteria, he returned to his office and studied a report Maraa sent to him, which was a very long, exhaustive, and detailed way of saying _they'll keep their word because they have no other option_. But what worried him was that they may find another option, may find some way to backstab them. That he might watch Coma and everyone on her ship die out in the void between galaxies when the Consortium betrayed them.

He sighed and leaned back in his chair…maybe that was why _Citadel Online_ had his attention. It was an escape, an entirely different world where he didn't have these problems…where he didn't have to face the possibility that he might order his friends to their deaths. Just a quiet, peaceful meadow on a hill, with a warm breeze that smelled of grass and flowers….

He scrubbed his hands over his face, then turned the chair and looked out the window. He had a lot to think about, but he didn't want to do it in his office. He needed a place to think without distractions, someplace _real_, someplace well divorced from Karis and the problems that lurked in the shadows of his homeworld. As much as the tree at home gave him peace, there were too many distractions there, especially with Jyslin and the kids within commune range.

So, in typical Jason fashion, he slipped out of the White House without telling anyone, got into his brand new Nova fighter sitting on the pad, and left the planet. He landed nearly an hour later on the pad at his vacation house on Tir Tairngire, then walked out away from the house, up the hill, and sat down and put his back against the _oye_ tree that grew there. It was night here as well, and the sky was half-filled on one side with the Magnum Dwarf formation, and on the other half, the edge of the Milky Way was starting to creep into the night sky. The air here was fresh, pristine, smelled of grass and flowers, and the smell of the bark of the _oye_ tree soothed him. This wasn't his tree, it didn't have the same sense of presence to him, the same feel, but it still welcomed him as a friend, and sought to comfort the unsettled thoughts swirling through his mind.

He didn't understand why he felt this way. For days now, he'd been…disquieted. Pensive. Apprehensive. He'd been subject to bouts of melancholy reverie, which was very much unlike him. He just felt…felt like something ominous was coming. Felt like there was a storm on the horizon, a storm that he could sense, but could not see, and the uncertainty of it made him even more unsettled. He looked up into the growing canopy of the tree, which was getting wider and wider, and wondered if this was a _shaman_ thing, if he was sensing something that had nothing to do with the real world…or the world as most people understood it. Since the day the _shaman_ put the first _jaingi_ on his shoulder, he had felt that the world had become much larger, that there were parts of it that he had never seen until that moment, but now…now it was like he was seeing the dark shadows of that world that people did not _want_ to see. Did his moodiness the last takir or so have to do with the peace talks between the Confederation and the Andromedan empires, or was it rooted in something more mystical? Was he worried over the big changes he knew would come when peace was finalized, concerned that the Confederation may disband, or was it something else? Was there a darkness out there that was hiding within the shadows cast by the light of love, waiting for its chance to spread?

Or was he just being a moron?

A shadow fell over him, and he looked up to see the alpha wolf in the pack, standing in front of the moon…or one of the other moons of the gas giant in a higher orbit, which was in a full phase. His eyes were all but glowing, twin slits of radiance with a dark, shadowed body, then he stepped forward more and sat down. The change in position made his white fur suddenly glow in the light of the other moons up in the sky. "Hello friend," he said in a quiet, friendly voice, holding his hand out. The giant wolf reached out his paw with a bit of an amused expression and let him take hold of it. "You couldn't sleep either?"

The wolf looked at him with unblinking eyes.

"I don't know. I'm just…I can't shake the feeling that something bad's going to happen," he sighed. "It's been gnawing at me for days. Actually, more like since I came back from E Chaio," he corrected, holding up his hand and looking at it. Underneath that flesh was a machine, an endolimb, a collection of metal and silicon and polymers with artificial muscles, connected to his bone and nerve endings. It was an alien thing, but something that had become a part of him. It was something he could get rid of easily enough, have Songa replace the endolimbs with cloned arms…but that too seemed _wrong_. These arms, they were a reminder of his own hubris, a penance, a punishment for losing his head. The next time he got it into his head that he could fix everything himself, that putting his life at risk was acceptable to avenge his daughter's dignity, all he had to do was look at his hand. "There's something coming, friend. Something dark. And I don't know what it is."

The wolf laid down beside him, staring him the eyes and blinking slowly.

"If I could, I'd be preparing for it," he sighed, putting a hand over the _jaingi_ on his shoulder. "I don't even know if it's a feeling of foreboding based on my job, or based on _this_. With everything going on right now, everything's so jumbled together," he sighed. "Two peace treaties, the fleet expansion, the drives, just so much going on. I've been feeling burned out, and now this on top of it."

The wolf glanced to the side, the looked back at him.

"I have no idea. Takirs. Months," he said, leaning his head back against the tree. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I do just need to take a vacation…but I _can't_. Not right now. Not until things are settled with Andromeda. You think I can settle for an evening sitting under this tree without a care in the world?"

The wolf laid all the way down, then rolled over on his back and wriggled vigorously, giving him an impish look.

"Oh, rub it in more," he said accusingly. "I think when all things are considered, you got the better end of the deal when it comes to life," he said wryly. "And sometimes I think it was wrong of us to show up here and show you there's much more than the life you once knew. Sometimes, it feels like we robbed you of your innocence. I'm sorry for that."

He stopped moving, looking at Jason soberly.

"No, I wouldn't," he said. "This is where the Dreamers belong, and where this tree belongs. Have you met any of them yet?"

The wolf glanced at him.

"Wow. Maybe I should bring the elders here and have a conference. It's overdue," he mused, looking up again. "I'm sure they think I've forgotten about them. And I think I'd like to get a look at Alaria myself. I've only seen it in pictures."

The wolf blinked.

"Sure, if you want. Though I should warn you, the more you learn of the world outside, the more it's going to change you. There may come a time that you regret knowing. But for now, let's not talk about the outside. I came here to get away from it."

The wolf's mouth opened, his tongue lolling out to the side.

"You better feel lucky I'm too lazy to get up and come over there," he retorted playfully. He laughed when the wolf got up, stepped over, then flopped down over his legs, pinning him down. "Cheater," he accused, putting his hands on the wolf's side and shoulder and scrubbing his fingers gently through his fur. Their fur was very thick, but it was also almost amazingly soft, far softer than it appeared to be because their outer coats were a little shaggy. "I'm gonna be in so much trouble when Aya finds out I snuck off the planet, but I don't care," he said with a yawn, leaning his head back against the tree again. "I just want to not worry about anything, at least for a little while."

The wolf gave a snuffling sound.

"You won't be much help, you've never seen Aya angry," he said with a rueful chuckle, feeling distinctly sleepy and…content. Like being here, under the tree and with the wolf, was causing him to relax, to do just what he wanted, to _not_ worry. He just had to get through the next couple of takirs, and maybe everything was going to work out. And he was definitely going to go on a _long_ vacation when this was done, maybe a whole month, where he did nothing, worried about nothing, and gave himself a chance to rest and recharge.

There was much to do, much to worry about, and there was that feeling of foreboding, but those were worries for tomorrow. Not right now. Right now he was among friends in a place without distractions, in the gentle, soothing embrace of Tir Tairngire and the _oye_ tree. This was not Karis, this was not his home, not his tree, but this was a place where he felt very much welcome. This was a place illumined by the light of love, by the grace of harmony. This was the Promised Land, and while it was not his promised land, it was a land that sought to ease the burdens placed on his shoulders and give him the peace and quiet and support to maybe forget about them for a little while.

He wasn't entirely sure exactly when he fell asleep.

And the moment he woke up, he knew he was _in big trouble_.

Aya was not there, but the sun peeking over the trees warned him that he'd been here all night, had been here for hours. All five members of the pack were laying around the tree, forming a protective ring around him, and all but one was asleep. The youngest female was awake, laying on her belly with her head up, keeping watch while the others slept. He accessed Karis time on his gestalt and realized he'd been here for nearly twelve hours, that it was 07:16 back in Karsa, and that by now Aya must be thermonuclear. It wouldn't take her more than two minutes to find out where he'd gone, since his Nova's ID had been logged going through the Stargate and its telemetry was being sent back to command from the biogenic link here on Tir Tairngire. Besides, his gestalt would tell them where he was even if he stole someone else's skimmer or something.

He felt a little stiff, but he also felt…better. He didn't feel nearly as apprehensive and depressed as he had last night. He still had a lot on his mind, but he didn't feel nearly as pessimistic today. Maybe the alpha was right, maybe he just needed a relaxing vacation to get his mind back in order. He yawned and stretched, then stood up and walked around the trunk enough to get a look at the mecha hangar on the other side of the hill. If Aya was going to come here to get him, she'd come in a frigate, and the frigate would land over there.

No frigate. That was…maybe a good sign. Maybe not. He was expecting her to be here, either to wake him up by grabbing his foot and dragging him towards the frigate or to be nearby to wait for him to wake up and get some distance from his five furry protectors. But, if she wasn't here, that meant she had all night to seethe, and it was just going to make facing her even worse. A quick sweep with his talent told him that nobody else was here except the wolves; the house stood empty when not in use, though KMS units and members of Bunvar's build team did come over every day to check the house to make sure everything was alright. He almost dreaded doing it, but it had to be done. _[Cybi,]_ he called.

_ [Finally awake, I hear,]_ she replied lightly. _[Feeling alright?]_

_ [I guess. Why isn't Aya here trying to kill me?]_

_ [She did that last night,]_ Cybi replied with amusement rippling through her thought. _[She was met by a small army of animals that literally chased her back to her dropship. The local wildlife made it very clear to her you were not to be bothered,]_ she finished impishly. _[She realized about then that you were safe, because the animals weren't about to let anything threaten you. So she's not nearly as mad as you think she is. She's mad, don't think she's not, but she's not absolutely furious.]_

_ [Well, that's good news, I guess,]_ he answered, stepping carefully over the wolves, then heading for the pad by the house. His Nova was still sitting there. _[I should have told her I was coming here, but I didn't want anyone bothering me. I needed time by myself to think,]_ he told her.

_[You feel better?]_

_ [A little. So, any movement while I was hiding from the world?]_

_ [No. The council session to vote on the treaty isn't for twelve hours. Right now everyone's in a holding pattern, because nothing can move until that vote is made, either accepting it or rejecting it. What's new is that Kraal reported an hour ago that Gen is on his way to Syndicate military headquarters on E Chaio so he can be give them his report in person. So far, no new CEOs have been installed, so there's still no voting quorum for the Board. But there is one thing that's rather…unpleasant.]_

_ [What?]_

_ [The military has no plans to move the prisoners of war off Atrovet,]_ she replied. _[It seems it's too _expensive_ to ship that many people back to their home bases, so they're just going to leave them there. It's part economy, part punishment for them being captured. From what Kraal reported, all the enlisted soldiers have been discharged from the military, their back pay confiscated, and left to fend for themselves. The Benga soldiers that were captured in the Atrovet operation even had their corporate contracts revoked, what Kraal referred to as being _nopped_, as punishment for allowing us to take the Dreamers. The officers aren't being discharged, but they still have to find a way off the moon themselves as punishment for being captured. And if they don't report to their next duty assignment within thirty days, they'll be fined and reprimanded. Gen is one of only about 17,000 soldiers that the military took off the moon. They took the program participants and the high-ranking officers, and that's it. Anyone O-5 and below was left to more or less fend for themselves. That leaves close to twenty-two million soldiers on the moon whom the Syndicate is forcing to pay their own way off the moon, and nearly a million soldiers they have completely written off, every one of them a telepath.]_

_ [They're going to leave them there to starve?]_ Jason asked in shocked outrage.

_[Not exactly. They're going to make the soldiers that weren't nopped arrange their _own_ transportation off the moon. So they have to hire a civilian transport ship to come get them. So, if a sailor or Marine is too broke to buy passage off the moon, he's stuck there. They left them a comm device to let them contact transport services, and that's it. The ones that were nopped, they _are_ stuck on the moon, Jason. They can't legally hire a transport to move them because they don't have a corporate contract, and I doubt they could afford the bribes to have a transport come get them under the table. They're in effect leaving all the soldiers stationed in the Atrovet system on the moon, including all the telepaths that were stationed on the moon itself, most likely because they don't need them to control the Dreamers anymore. And what the Syndicate does not need, they throw away. Between the soldiers on the bases elsewhere in the system we captured and the telepaths on the moon, the total number of nopped soldiers is just over three million.]_

_ [Bull _shit_ is that going to happen,]_ he seethed, his thought incredulous and shocked at the pure cruelty of the Syndicate. Having one's contract with a megacorp terminated, or being "nopped" in the Benga language, was effectively a megacorp firing someone but not killing them, and it was a _very _bad thing to have happen. "Nops," the term for such people, couldn't interact with 95% of Syndicate society because they had no citizenship. Without an income, once they burned through what money they had, they had no way to eat. Without a sponsorship, they couldn't enter into legal agreements, which meant that they couldn't even rent a hotel room, which left them homeless. They were the destitute of the Syndicate, most of them resorting to crime to survive, and living in a society that considered them to be worse than vermin. There was no social safety net in the Syndicate, no charity, no kindness. Their only option was to try to sign on to another megacorp, and megacorps were very, very selective about taking on nops. That was _intentional_. They used nops to keep the rest of their wage slaves in line by using the threat of being cast out of Syndicate society as a potent threat, even more potent than killing them. If there was no threat of being "nopped," then there was no incentive to work, so megacorps intentionally left the nops to suffer and starve as motivation for those that thought that there might be something more to life than to be a slave to their corporate masters. The soldiers that had been stationed in the Atrovet system were facing the grim prospect of being stuck in the POW camps on the moon, unable to hire a transport to remove them, and they'd face slowly starving to death once they went through the supplies left on the moon…that or spending the rest of their lives subsistence farming on the island where they were left. _[I'm…I guess I shouldn't be as surprised as I am. We know what the Benga are. I just didn't think that level of callous cruelty would extend even to their soldiers. That's biting the hand that feeds them.]_

_ [True,]_ she agreed. _[But I guess the Syndicate is more interested in finding ways to write off soldiers they don't really need and punishing the ones they do by fining them for not being at their duty stations than they are in getting their soldiers home.]_

_ [God, they are so fucking horrible,]_ he sent, his thought almost bubbling with disgust._ [But…this is an opportunity. Cybi, patch in Kraal, if he's awake.]_

_ [One moment.]_

_ [What is it, Jason?]_ Kraal asked.

_[Cybi just told me what those asses did, nopping the Atrovet POWs,]_ he communed, his thought seething. _[I want to ask a simple but serious question, Kraal. How hard would it be to set up our _own_ corp within the Syndicate? One not on the Board, but with the same legal powers as megacorps?]_

_ [Hmm. It would be possible to set up an autonomous corporation, cousin. Expensive, but possible,]_ he replied. _[There's a process for a megacorp to spin off a client company to become autonomous, and those corps are known as shadow corporations. The megacorps use them for covert operations against other megacorps, entities that the megacorps control but aren't directly connected to them, so they have plausible deniability for anything the shadow corp does.]_

_ [Then that sounds _exactly_ what we need here. Kraal, set one up. Set it up, and offer every nopped soldier on Atrovet a contract with it. That gives us a large and immediate pool of experienced mercenaries within Andromeda, including a large number of Benga telepaths, but it also creates a large network of information gatherers that you can use throughout the Syndicate. We spread those soldiers out under the guise of working in satellite offices of our shadow corp and have them keep their ears open, and they send all that information to you,]_ he declared.

_[Jason, that's going to be _extremely_ expensive,]_ Kraal warned, _[but I see the advantage in it, as well as an intriguing opportunity. I'll set it up as a transport corporation, an independent company hauling both cargo and civilians. A large pool of ex-military workers will give me a ready reserve of workers that know how to maintain and operate the transports, and we'll have a logical reason to have offices spread across Andromeda. But even more than that, cousin, it will give us a perfectly legal and above-board means to move people and equipment through Andromeda without having to rely on CMS ships, and given Andromeda is a very big galaxy, we'll need those soldiers to staff enough offices to give us coverage across the Syndicate. Our operatives and equipment will be on transports owned by a Syndicate corp, on official business for that corp, everything will be completely legal and we don't have to risk violating a peace treaty using a CMS ship to move our assets. And if we move fast, we can get it done before Tricorp selects a new CEO, get it done while there's still chaos in the bureaucracy, which will make it much easier to slip something through. Give me three days, cousin, to get the paperwork through Tricorp to set up a shadow corporation, then cover our tracks so nobody in the corp has any knowledge of it. But I'm going to warn you now, cousin, Denmother is going to send you a _gigantic_ bill for this. I have to buy billions of _tekk_ worth of equipment, and buy or lease facilities and offices to set this up. And that doesn't even include the salaries of _three million_ soldiers we'll have to pay. It's going to be almost _prohibitively _expensive, cousin. We'll have to put most of them on minimal pay until we get things set up and can organize some kind of sustainable revenue stream into the operation. It's going to be very rough for them for a while, but I suppose they'll still jump at it. The alternative is starvation and ostracism. Barely scraping by and living in one room hovels is still better than being nopped.]_

_ [It will be worth it. I really didn't consider the idea of being able to use it to move our own stuff through Andromeda without having to sneak it around, but that alone will make it worth it. I was thinking more along the lines of having our own military organization in Andromeda that we could use if it was necessary, one that doesn't violate our oaths, and one that doubles as information gatherers for you. Soldiers already there and who won't attract too much attention, because they're _Syndicate_.]_

_ [I'll set that up too,]_ Kraal affirmed. _[The Syndicate's laws make it perfectly legal for a corp to have its own military forces, so I'll set up a private military operation to go paw in paw with the transport company. And we can use all those captured Syndicate assets to equip it,]_ he said with some amusement in his voice. _[How many Marauders do we have just sitting in warehouses right now?]_

_ [Tons. We got a shitload of gear from those military bases on Atrovet and Sha Ra's fleet when she surrendered it,]_ he confirmed. _[Marauders, walkers, ground batteries, missile launcher stations, infantry weapons, armor, and equipment, the whole nine yards. I didn't have them destroy any of it. Hell, we can even get our hands on fully intact Syndicate military vessels. There are thousands of them still just sitting in mothballs waiting for empires to decide what to do with them. I take it I should buy some of them back?]_

_ [Yes,]_ Kraal answered. _[Aim for around one hundred of each ship class except super-ships, cousin, that gives us a small but effective military force that will exist on paper to protect our transports, that's not so large that it attracts unwanted attention. We just have to make absolutely sure the Syndicate Navy can't ID them as being ships from Sha Ra's fleet. And I think I know how we can do that,]_ he mused. _[The derelicts just floating around in Andromeda, they have computers and ID beacons. We salvage those computers and beacons and swap them with the ones on the active ships. That will make it look like the company's naval assets were salvaged from ships abandoned after past battles with the Consortium, and that's _legal_. Syndicate salvage laws are rather liberal, no doubt to make it easy for one megacorp to steal the assets of another. Under their maritime laws, the Terran expression _possession is nine tenths of the law_ certainly applies. Let me discuss this in detail with the Denmother, Jason. I'm sure she'll have some suggestions for us. She is far wiser than we are.]_

_ [I'll agree with that,]_ he said. _[But get started on the process as soon as you can, and we'll work Denmother's suggestions in once you form the shadow corporation. I'm fairly sure I can get my hands on those ships fairly cheap, several empires will sell them to me at scrap metal rates. And I don't think we have to keep this secret from the Confederation,]_ he added. _[If the council knows what we're doing, they won't bitch too much about me buying back even _more_ Syndicate ships. Many of them are still very curious over why I bought back the super-ships.]_

_ [Let's let the Denmother make that decision, cousin.]_

_ [I'll agree with you there.]_

_ [I'll get started on this. I'll keep your office informed.]_

_ [Good deal, cousin,]_ he called, then Kraal dropped from the conversation_. [Cybi, generate a plan to move all our captured Syndicate stuff to Prakka so it's available for Kraal to use as he sees fit,]_ he told her. _[Syndicate tech only.]_

_ [That's a fairly good idea, Jason,]_ Cybi communed approvingly. _[I'll inform Jrz'kii of your order, so she can set up the logistics. I'll also warn Bunvar, she'll have to build more warehouse space to hold it all. That, or she'll have to tow in some orbital storage facilities, whichever she deems is most efficient.]_

_ [As long as it works, she can do whatever she wants,]_ he answered, walking onto the pad. His Nova's cockpit canopy opened, and the ladder extended. _[I'll be going straight to the office, Cybi, I want to avoid Aya as long as I possibly can.]_

_ [You're only making it worse, Jason,]_ she warned impishly.

_[I have some calls to make, and I don't want anyone seeing me on holo with a black eye,]_ he answered, which made her laugh. _[Do me a favor and warn Jys when she wakes up. I may be too busy to call her for a couple of hours.]_

_ [She's over at Tim and Symone's, and she's still asleep,]_ she told him.

_[Is she mad?]_

_ [Of course not. She said that as mopey as you've been the last takir or so, maybe going to Tir Tairngire was exactly what you needed.]_

_ [God, I love that woman,]_ he professed as he climbed up into the cockpit and started strapping himself in, the canopy closing. Novas were designed so a pilot could fly it without armor, but it still had no controls. It did have flight information panels, however, since it was designed to be flown either in full merge mode or interface mode. So, when he started the mecha, the HUD holos popped up in front of the glass panels in the cockpit facing the seat, and more data was projected onto the canopy glass. He decided not to fly by merge, to fly in interface mode, and started the engines. The young female wolf bounded down the hill towards him, so he opened the cockpit canopy again and looked down at her. "Tell the others I went home, and thank you for everything," he shouted to her. "I'll be back in a few days, as soon as I can arrange some time off. Oh, and tell your alpha that I didn't forget my promise. If he wants to come to Karis, we'll arrange it when I come back."

She gave a simple nod, backing up off the pad and sitting down.

"See you in a few days," he called, then closed the canopy again.

Zaa was in his office by the time he got back to Karis, and they sat down and discussed his idea in more detail. She revealed she was kicking around the idea of doing something what Jason suggested, using Syndicate citizens as information gatherers to expand the Kimdori network there, and the Syndicate disenfranchising well over three million soldiers in one fell swoop granted them the perfect opportunity to move on it. It would give them a very large pool of trained military veterans from which to draw that could both uphold the shadow corp's cover as a transport company and gather information for the Kimdori. It would require them to do actual business with the Syndicate megacorps, using a shell company to sell things like replicated metals to Syndicate metalworking companies to raise the Syndicate cash to pay their people. And as much as he didn't like the idea of even giving a Syndicate company profit, it was worth it to get their foot in the door so they could keep a close eye on what was going on in Andromeda.

It would also make sure that three million soldiers for which Jason felt some portion of responsibility wouldn't be trapped on Atrovet, or slowly starve to death huddling in a filthy alley, or die in a Syndicate slave labor prison camp. He promised those men and women he would see to their welfare and get them home when they surrendered, and by God, he wasn't going to abandon them to _that_. If the Syndicate wasn't going to take care of them, then he would. And they'd help out the house in the bargain. They'd gain a sizable force of skilled soldiers, and even if they knew that they were working for an enemy of the Syndicate government, they probably wouldn't care. As long as they got a paycheck and there was no intrinsic risk to themselves, they were golden.

In some respects, the Syndicate citizens were similar to the Faey in that self-interest was their primary motivation, but the heartless cruelty that had been ingrained into most Syndicate citizens made them far too dangerous to trust. Faey were selfish and self-centered, but they weren't _evil_. Jason wouldn't be stupid enough to think that the soldiers he was saving would show him any loyalty at all, but he wasn't doing what he was doing to have them fawn over him. He was doing it because it was the right thing to do, and that with the proper precautions, those soldiers would do their jobs and do them well.

He would not allow the darkness of the Syndicate to dim his own light.

Kraal and Maraa joined them via hologram after about an hour, and they worked out their plan. They would form a transport shadow corporation, moving people and supplies from system to system within Andromeda. The soldiers they'd hire would be the employees, staffing the offices, flying and maintaining the transports, operating the private military assets the company would use to protect its transports, and doing all the administrative work, but they'd also be gathering information and sending it up to corporate HQ, which would be staffed primarily by Kimdori infiltrators. Their focus when it came to their ex-military employees would be on the telepaths, putting telepaths in key positions that would let them gather as much information as they could. They were going to fund the operation with commerce, by establishing covert trade relationships with select Syndicate megacorps, those that most aligned with what they wanted the Syndicate to do, selling raw materials to the Syndicate to raise the tekk to pay for the operation. That was going to put a significant economic burden on the house until the transport company started making money, to the point where they might actually run in the red for a couple of years, but they had the cash reserves to handle it. It was going to make Kumi absolutely livid, but Jason considered this to be a justifiable expense. It would get them a solid foothold in Andromeda within the Syndicate's own system, it would put in place military assets that answered to the house if they were ever needed, and most importantly, it would not violate their oaths.

One way to offset the cost was by increasing industrial production and dedicating it to funding the Andromeda operation, so Jason called in Trenirk and discussed that idea with him. And he heard what he wanted to hear, mainly in the form of a hologram Trenirk put up. "What is this, Tren?" he asked, looking at a long-range hologram of an asteroid.

"This is a mining survey pic of a system in galaxy A5A-1," he replied. "The KES found it during their scans of the galaxy to make sure it was suitable for the Consortium to be moved there. Jayce, this asteroid is solid Telvestrium-407," he said, which made Jason whistle.

"Like that one we found in the R quadrant?"

"Yeah, but this one is five times bigger," he declared. "This asteroid is worth about one _trillion_ credits, Jayce. If you need to raise some quick cash, there it is. Right there for the taking."

"And the drives just paid for themselves," Maraa laughed.

"No doubt," Kraal agreed.

"Holy shit," Jason breathed. "It's that big?"

"It's that big," Trenirk nodded. "We send out a recovery team, tow it back, then sell it on the galactic market. I'd suggest keeping it for making Neutronium, but you said we need money. So here it is."

"How long would that fund the project, Denmother?"

"It would get it off the ground," she replied. "But it won't make it solvent. We can use it to buy the equipment and rent the facilities we need. It can get us started, but we'll need to inject more capital into the project to keep it going."

"I'm almost afraid to ask what kind of operation you're setting up that can't be funded by _that_," Trenirk mused, pointing at the hologram.

"A very large one, Trenirk," she replied mildly. "A very, very large one."

"Thanks, Tren," he said. "Do me a favor and send down the order to recover that asteroid, but I need you to move it to Prakka," he told the Makati. "Once they get it there, have them clean it up and chop it into standard 100 benkonn industrial cubes, make it look like it was mined and refined the traditional way."

"No problem, Jayce. It'll be there in two days, and they should have it packaged and ready for delivery to the buyers in about fifteen days," he nodded, then he turned and scurried from the office.

"Kraal, find out what the going rate is for Telvestrium-407 is on the Syndicate metals market," he told the massive black-furred male. "And line up some buyers."

"That's going to require me to set up another shadow corporation, cousin, but I already planned on doing that," he answered. "We'll need an autonomous shadow corp in their system to act as our shell company." A Kimdori's arm appeared in the hologram, handing Kraal a handpanel. "And so you know, cousin, the going rate for Telvestrium-407 is six hundred tekk per _badu_. That makes the asteroid worth about 1.7 trillion tekk."

"Yeah, I think that's going to set up our shadow corp," Jason said dryly.

"That will fund buying the _assets_, Jason. I'll need more tekk to pay the _salaries_," Kraal stressed. "I don't think you understand the scope of Denmother's plan. We won't have just a few hundred facilities, cousin, we'll have _tens of thousands_. Some will only be small offices in spaceports, some will be major maintenance facilities. We'll need 16,233 offices at strategic systems through the Syndicate to have realistic coverage of the entire galaxy. We'll have a fleet of nearly thirty thousand ships, both cargo freighters and personnel transports, and that means we pay to maintain them. And remember, we're going to be paying _three million _salaries, anywhere from twenty thousand tekk a year to one hundred thousand, and that is a tremendous amount of money. We'll be paying out approximately three hundred _billion _tekk a year, just in employee salaries. We'll need to find an asteroid like that every two to three years to pay those salaries. That's what it's going to take to build a viable company that spans across Andromeda, and it _has_ to do that to be viable. The company will have to have pan-galactic coverage for it to do what we need it to do."

"Okay, I get the idea," he said.

"How long will it take, Handgroom?" Zaa asked.

"I'll have the companies set up by the end of the cycle," he answered. "It's going to take us some few months to find and buy the ships and equipment we need, and while we do that, we'll be finding and leasing out office space. We'll also have to find strategically located industrial property to set up maintenance facilities for the ships. In the meantime, I think it's best if we hire the Syndicate soldiers and keep them on Atrovet in the short term, send in some supplies and some modular housing and train them in their future jobs right there on the moon, then move them to their new jobs as we get things set up. That in itself will be a significant operation, given we have virtually no infrastructure in place."

"Are we going to be able to do that?" Jason asked. "Atrovet is a closed system."

"Not anymore," Kraal answered. "When we took the Dreamers, the Syndicate military declassified the system. They're going to remove all of their equipment and then sell it on the galactic market next fiscal cycle. The military owns the system, but they don't need it anymore. The bases there existed for the sole reason of keeping the Dreamers away from the Consortium. And the Dreamers are gone."

"Could _we_ buy the system?" Jason asked. "How much would an entire star system usually go for?"

"Far more than we could raise in time," Kraal answered. "An entire star system usually goes for around one quadrillion tekk. We'd have to find a thousand of those asteroids to raise the capital to buy the system."

"So, that gives us about a year to get all the Benga off the moon."

"More or less," he nodded. "And we can use the moon to train the soldiers in their new jobs while we do it."

After working out a few more details, the meeting broke up. Kraal and Maraa got to work on their parts of the plan, and Zaa and Jason discussed a few final details before she went back to Kimdori Prime. After they were gone, Jason sat in his chair, turned to look out the window, and petted Chichi And he felt…_better_. He didn't understand why he did, but he did. No, he did understand. Up until this point, he had this feeling that the Syndicate was going to be an eternal pain in his ass, but now they were taking action to at least be in a position to keep a close eye on them. And they would bring something to Andromeda that had been lacking for thousands of years…_kindness_. Jason planned to treat his workers well, to show them that the Syndicate way was not the only way, and this would be the beginning. He would have to move slowly, carefully, treat them the way they expected to be treated at first and then slowly show them a better path through patience and kindness, which he hoped would foster loyalty from his workers that went beyond just getting a paycheck. Much as he had earned Gen's respect and friendship, he wanted more men like Gen in his organization. And if he couldn't find them, he'd _make_ them.

And when Gen finished his enlistment with the military, Jason fully intended to bring him in to head the paramilitary organization that would operate with the company they were building. Gen would be an _outstanding_ commander, because he was very much unlike other Benga in that he understood the value of loyalty when it came to soldiers.

The fact that they had a plan for Andromeda now had eased his troubled mind, more than he expected, and gave him hope. He now had hope that they could find a permanent peace with the Syndicate, and if they could not, then at least he would have an organization inside Andromeda to help him beat the aggression out of a future Board.

Time would tell, but he had the feeling that time was going to be on his side.

_Kaira, 9 Kedaa, 4405, Faey Orthodox Calendar_

_ Tuesday, 22 April 2019 Terran Standard Calendar_

_ Kaira, 9 Kedaa, year 1330 of the 97__th__ Generation, Karinne Historical Reference Calendar_

_Camp Sentinel, Prakka 21-C_

It was done.

Jason walked with the albino Kimdori Maraa as they moved through the new Camp Sentinel, a Karinne Marine base established at Prakka that would be their primary forward military outpost in Andromeda. Camp Sentinel was one of three land bases and one orbital station that made up the military operation here, a permanent presence that would host both Kimdori and Karinne intelligence gathering operations. All the surveillance probes in Andromeda would send their data here, where Kraal and Maraa both had analysts that would carefully study the intel and bring anything important to their attention.

Maraa had started moving on the next phase of her operations, and that was Galaxy A5A-1. Just nine hours ago, the Confederation had formally accepted the peace treaty offered by the Consortium, and they were already starting to act on it. The Consortium was told where to send their ships to use the Stargate that was going to be brought in, and since they wouldn't need stasis pods, to bring every civilian they could get on a ship and bring them. Those ships would unload their passengers to be taken through and go back to get more, which would allow them to evacuate as many Consortium citizens as possible.

The Confederation had a detailed plan to do this, and the Consortium had perused it for about two hours before signing off, because it was a good plan. Their evacuation of Atrovet had given his Kizzik logistics experts the opportunity to design the most efficient means available to move huge numbers of civilians in a short time, and they would do it again for the Consortium. They were bringing in three Stargates and a Nexus bridge to evacuate civilians and move supplies and equipment, and on the other side, they'd set up an entry station to process those civilians and assign them to one of 23 different planets they'd selected for initial colonization, based on that species' environmental requirements. Far more people were coming than would fit on just 23 planets, but those planets were just way stations, giving them a place to collect their breath, organize themselves, then move on to their ultimate destination. The Consortium would select those destinations going on the starchart data that the Karinnes supplied to them and their own scouting reports. They were going to colonize about 2,400 planets across the entire galaxy, and do it all at once, so things were going to be a bit chaotic for them to start out. But once they established themselves and started building up some infrastructure, Jason felt they'd be alright.

Much as it pained him to even think that, given everything they'd done to him and his house.

Maraa had her operatives over there already, setting up the intelligence network that would keep an eye on the Consortium. They would be in place and ready to go before the first Consortium ship even arrived, but for now, she had most of her operation here on Prakka, transitioning it over.

Jason hadn't been at the council meeting that accepted the peace treaty, because he didn't trust himself to be civil to the representative of the Consortium that attended the formal acceptance session via hologram. Cyrsi had sat in for him, had voted yes on the treaty by proxy. He selected her because she was a CBIM that hadn't been online when the Consortium war happened, so she could at least be civil.

"We should have everything ready before the first ships arrive," Maraa told him. "The pieces of the Stargate are in transit now, and the sister gate is already there and is being assembled. They're almost done preparing to move Nexus Three and Four. They should be en route within the hour."

"I don't like the idea of letting the Consortium see Gate Paragon," he grunted. "But we don't really have a choice. It's the only way to get Nexus Three over there."

"We're going to need it to move that many ships. We're only using one gate, so we need the largest gate possible so their ships aren't bottlenecked at the gate. Jrz'kii is going to establish traffic lanes so ships can pass through in both directions without crashing into one another. They have to move as much as they can in two months. Kraal estimates that it's going to take the Syndicate two months to reform the Board and get serious about ending the war with the Consortium. So they have two months to move as much as they can when they're not doing it under fire."

"Have they realigned their naval forces to protect the planets they're evacuating along the front?"

She nodded. "Their navy is going to hold the Syndicate at the current line to give their people as much time as possible to evacuate. You can't fault them for that."

"No, I suppose not," he grunted. "I'm glad the war with them is over, but I don't like having to work with them now," he added with a mutter.

"That's why the _only_ thing you're doing is supplying the gates and the interdictors to drop their colonization fleet out of hyperspace. Mesaiima made sure to arrange it so the Consortium representative won't be riding on the _Tianne_. It's going to tow a Verutan ship in to do the actual negotiations. The Verutans were neutral during the Consortium War, so they're best for it. If it was the _Tianne_, the Consortium ships might fire on it before their diplomat could talk them down."

"Works for me, I'd have hated to order Palla to host one of them," he said, looking over at her. "But at least we can say that at least that war is officially over," he sighed. "One down, one to go."

"Any word on that?"

He shook his head. "Kraal's people say no change. It's going to depend entirely on who wins each Board seat as to whether or not they accept the peace treaty. Kraal's doing what he can to make sure the people we want win those seats, but you know how the Syndicate is."

"Those candidates are probably sealed in bunkers and guarded by small armies."

"Exactly."

"I see that you had the doctors heal the bruise," she said with slight amusement.

He touched his face almost unconsciously. Aya had shown her displeasure with his stunt by slapping him with her gauntlet in the face, giving him a bruised cheek…and he was surprised that was all he got. He fully understood that he was a nightmare for his guards, someone under their protection that often chafed under their rules and restrictions and wasn't afraid to ditch them when he felt he didn't need them, or they were being silly. He was a grown man, he could take care of himself, and besides, going to Tir Tairngire was safe, so he didn't need guards. "You know Aya."

"It's your own fault, you know," she chuckled.

"I keep her on her toes. It keeps her young and vigorous," he drawled, which made her chuckle. "She'll get her chance to relax. Now that the peace treaty is signed, and there's nothing we can do about the Syndicate but wait, I've decided to take a vacation. I'll be on Tir Tairngire for two takirs or so, I haven't decided exactly how long yet. I want to meet with the Dreamers, take a tour of the moon and see what they're up to while I'm there, so it'll be a working vacation. I could use it. After the last few months, I really do need a break."

"I can imagine. You're the only one that hasn't taken a little time off since all this started. I think you deserve to put your feet up for a while, as the Terrans say."

"I'm not going to argue with you, cousin," he told her, glancing over at her with a smile. "I'm going to let Cybi sit in my chair while I'm gone, give her a little experience acting as regent. Just in case."

"Understandable. You taking the kids or making them stay home so they don't miss school?"

"And have them hate me forever?" he asked, which made her laugh. "Jys is arranging tutors for them so they don't fall behind. Whoa, careful," he said in a gentle voice, stopping and leaning down to pat a juvenile tabi. They had more or less moved into the camp in large numbers, and the KMS was majorly spoiling them. Tabis were the ultimate opportunists, and many of them had figured out that all they had to do to get free food was to act cute. "Be more careful, little one, I almost kicked you. Not all of us look down when we walk."

The tabi gave a squeaky little _rowr_ and bounded off towards the mess hall, where several other tabis were gathered in anticipation. They'd figured out meal times for the Marines here and were gathering for the feast.

"What did it say?" she asked.

"Nothing worth repeating," he replied, looking over at her. "Just the typical teenage rebellion."

She laughed. "I'm surprised there are any left on the moon. I'd have thought about the entire population would have found its way onto ships by now."

"My people keep very strict control over that to make sure the tabis aren't depopulated," he told her. "I'm sure half the Marines here think they own one of them by now, but they don't take them off the moon. Tabis will attach themselves to a person they particularly like, we've come to learn. They're a lot like vulpars that way."

"And who is it in your house that Twilight is most attached to?"

"Amber," he replied immediately and seriously. "Twilight is _Amber's_ tabi, not ours. If Amber ever leaves the house, Twilight goes with her."

"A pet owning a pet," Maraa mused, then she laughed.

"If you call Amber a pet where she can hear you, she'll bite you," Jason warned lightly. "Now let's get down to the business of why we're here."

Jason's business on the moon was mainly busy work, but he felt it was important. Bunvar had started moving the Syndicate military assets they were assigning to the company they were founding to Prakka, and she was at Camp Sentinel doing some consulting with the Marine general that commanded the camp about expanding the base. While the KMS did have a civil engineering division, they usually didn't do the kind of work that General Maie Karinne wanted done at the camp. They were _combat _engineers, who did their work in active war theaters. When it came to projects like what Maie had in mind, it was best to have Bunvar's department take care of it.

They met Bunvar in Maie's office in the center of camp, the female Makati standing on Maie's side of the desk, pointing out features to her on a flat hologram hovering over it. "Jason, what are you doing over here?" Bunvar asked as they came in.

"I decided to come talk to you in person rather than recall you to Karis, B," he told her.

"Where are your guards?"

"Right now? Wandering around, I suppose," he said. "They consider this a secure facility, so they'll let me off the leash. At least a little bit," he drawled, which made all three females in the room laugh. "You two getting things ironed out?"

"More or less, your Grace," Maie nodded. "Bunvar likes my expansion plan, at least with a few changes. We're going to need that space, this camp will be a major forward operations position if we ever go to war with the Syndicate again. I need enough infrastructure in place to handle a population ten times the size that's here now."

"I'll take care of it," Bunvar told her.

"Well, I'm here to add to your work load. You thought about where we're storing those assets I'm sending?"

"Yes, and we're going to do it the easy way," she answered. "I'm going to bring in a series of orbital storage facilities to hold them, as well as a mothball shipyard for the ships. We'll put them all in orbit around Moon Q. I think we should keep that equipment separate from our own, for more than one reason. The main one being I get the feeling that we're going to be accessing that equipment a lot, so we need it in a position where it can be quickly pulled out of storage and shipped to where it needs to go. Orbital stations cut a lot of time off that. They'll be around their own moon, so it keeps regular traffic away from it and also keeps the lanes clear to and from the moon to the Stargate in case we have to send anything out in a rush."

"Always practical," Jason said with an approving nod.

"I'm Makati, Jason, we define practical," she replied with a smile. "Without us, the Imperium would have collapsed two thousand years ago. We rein in their silliness," she said, pointing at Maie.

"Watch it, Bunvar," Maie retorted playfully.

"You have enough stations to handle the inventory?"

"Yup," she replied. "I talked to Jrz'kii about it, and between her and me, we have more than enough MK-170 cargo terminals and the MS-400 storage stations in reserve to handle it. She's already started moving them here."

"Guess you were right, B, building more than what we needed _is_ going to be useful to us in the long run," he chuckled.

"We told you, Jayce," she smiled. "If that was all you needed, you can let us get back to planning this base expansion."

"Don't throw me out of my own base, woman," he threatened, then laughed when she gave him a tart look and shooed him away with her hand.

That business done, Jason and Maraa headed back for the frigate that brought him, talking about much less important things. He'd developed a sincere friendship with Maraa since she was brought in to be Gamekeeper over the Consortium, because she was one of the most down to earth Kimdori he'd met. She was very _cosmopolitan_ among her people, less constrained by their millennia of tradition, willing to try new things, and not afraid to criticize the parts of her society she felt needed improvement…and that made her an absolute firebrand. But where it mattered, she was one of the best Gamekeepers the Kimdori could field, and that was why she was entrusted to such an important post. Zaa put up with her rebellious nature because she was very good at her job.

But Maraa wasn't alone in that regard. Zaa herself had shown quite a bit of a willingness to go against tradition, mainly in her choice of Kiaari for Gamekeeper of Terra. Tradition would have demanded that a highly experienced Gamekeeper with centuries of experience be assigned to a post that important, but she had instead went with a Kimdori that was shockingly young and basically untested, because her instinct told her that Kiaari would excel on Terra. And her instinct bore fruit, because Jason doubted that any Kimdori would be a better Gamekeeper for Terra than Kiaari. She had exactly the right kind of mental attitude to handle that rather unusual post, and just enough independence to do things in the ways that were against tradition but were necessary to operate effectively on Terra. She would have been a disaster at another Gamekeeper post, but on Terra, she was a perfect fit.

And Zaa knew it.

Dera and Ryn met him back at the frigate, each of them carrying _their_ reason for coming…tabis. Aya wanted more tabis for the strip, so she'd been sending her guards here to find one of their own in a rotation of two guards every three days, to give both her girls and the tabis time to adjust before new ones were brought in. She wanted all 45 of her girls with a tabi by the end of the month, which would be trained with Jason's help in their duties as service animals, to defend the strip from hostile incursion. Of course, giving each of her girls a loving and adorable pet had _nothing_ to do with that decision…nothing at all.

Sometimes Jason felt that unleashing tabis on the Confederation may have been the biggest mistake of his life. In fifty years, the little furballs were going to be ruling the universe, conquering it with their cuteness.

"I see each of you found one," he noted.

_More like she found me,_ Dera told him, scratching the rather large smoke-colored tabi between her ears. _Came right up to me and demanded I pick her up._

"That's not unusual," Jason chuckled. "Tabis can sense who they can wrap around their evil little paws. She picked her slave," he teased. He leaned down, his hands on his knees, and addressed the female. "She wants to take you home with her," he told the animal. "Is that alright with you?"

It gave a little chirping sound.

"Well, you'll be living in a different place, very different from this place, and you'll have plenty of food and attention, and a lot of other tabis to hang around with and children and toys to play with. You'll have a soft, cozy bed in a sheltered place out of the rain, a place where the air is always just as warm or as cool as you want it to be. You won't ever have to hunt again, and you'll be in a safe place with no predators hunting you. In return, they'll ask you to warn them if you sense something nearby that wants to do harm. What do you say? Is that a fair trade?"

Both of the tabis gave an eager chirp. The one in Ryn's hands was much smaller, with light tan fur with several brown spots randomly dotting its head and body. It looked to barely be more than a juvenile.

"They're both in," he told them. "When you get there, they'll let you settle in for a few days to get used to the place, then they're going to teach you things, signals you can use to communicate with each other. Not all of us can talk to you the way I can," he warned. "And they'll teach you how things work where we live. You'll be protecting our territory by ferreting out those that want to do harm. You find them, they will deal with them," he told them, pointing at Ryn. "But it'll be an easy and boring job for you," he told them with a smile. "The place where we're going, it's a very safe place. They're asking for your help just as a precaution, to make sure it _stays_ safe."

Both tabis gave another little chirp, and the younger one gave a second little growling squeak, which made Jason laugh. "Easy there, tiger, just let them handle the fighting part," he told the young tabi. "I think you found a real firebrand, Ryn."

_Then he suits me,_ she replied with a smile, stroking the young tabi's tan fur. _Are we ready to go home, Jason?_

"I think we are," he replied. "Remind me to tell Aya that I've decided to go on vacation earlier than planned. I don't think I want to be anywhere near us helping the Consortium, so I'm going to spend two takirs or so on Tir Tairngire and let the others handle it. They'll get everything done without me looking over their shoulder."

_Now if only you could understand that in everything else,_ Dera smiled.

"If I wasn't nosy, the Kimdori would disown me," he said simply, which made both of them give that wheezing, voiceless laughter. "Now let's go home and start planning for our vacation."


End file.
